Inside The White House – Bees! from The White House on Vimeo.This beehive on the South Lawn is a first for the White House. The busy bees pollinate the kitchen garden, flora all over Washington and provide honey for the White House kitchen. Take a look at this year’s colony, estimated at about 70,000 bees, and listen to how the idea for a beehive on the South Lawn came about.

I’d like to introduce the readers of Outside the Neatline to another blog that is really well done in regards to covering climate change/global warming and weather in general. The name of the blog is Dr. Jeff Masters’ Wunderblog and is hosted at the Weather Underground website. In his June 17, 2010 post, Dr. Jeff Masters reviews the most recent report from the National Climatic Data Center and features the figure below:

So I came across this article in the NY Times today, albeit a little late (It was published over a year ago), and found it interesting. The article is a review of the book “You are Here” by Colin Ellard. The author examines our increasing dependence on GPS and associated mapping technology and whether it’s diminishing our ability to be spatially aware of where we are.

I was watching a program on CNBC yesterday night entitled “One Nation Overweight“. The program highlighted a few of the problems associated with Obesity but some of the most startling facts were those concerning our nations children. Take this one for example; nearly one third of the our children are considered overweight and for the first time in the history of our nation some believe that our younger generation may have a shorter life span than their parents.

Here are some informative web links to better inform you on Americas weight problem:

Today is the Summer Solstice of 2010! What’s important about the summer solstice? It’s the day of the year when the northern hemisphere of Earth is tilted at it’s maximum extent towards the sun. It also means the longest day of the year for those in the northern hemisphere and the shortest day of the year for those in the southern hemisphere. From this point forward in time the Earth will slowly begin tilting its axis away from the Sun until the northern hemisphere experiences the winter solstice on December 21, 2010. The back and forth tilting of the Earth’s axis is what creates the seasons. Watch the following video for a simple overview of the solstices, equinoxes and seasons below.

I can’t believe I’m saying this, but… I might consider the purchase of an iPad now (anybody have $500 they can donate?) . GISRoam allows the user to create, edit and perform attribute queries. This app is currently FREE, so don’t wait too long to download and try it! If any one gets the chance to review this application, please, PLEASE contact us and let us know what you think about it!

So the BP Oil Spill is not breaking news, but as of this post it’s still happening. The scale of the spill is still not easy to comprehend and today I found myself wondering “how large is it really?” The the following link “6 Ways to Visualize the BP Oil Spill” helps to put things in perspective. The page from makeuseof.com provides 6 other links from commercial, federal and private entities that are attempting to aid in the monitoring and public awareness of this crisis. Embedded below is an interesting Google Map mash-up that allows you to place the oil slick on different geographic extents:

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Check the following RSS Box for updated imagery from NASA’s Oil Spill Monitoring Page, this is where those hours of studying your remote sensing text books and labs come to life.